[Pg 62]And then she turned away from the windows and had no more interest in any of them, going with me all over the rest of the room with rather the air of a person who thought of renting it than a high-brow criminal investigator hunting clews.

"He lived here—years, you say?" I nodded. She slid her hand over the plush cushions of a morris chair, threw back the covers of an iron bed in one corner and felt of the mattress, then went and stood before the bare little dresser. "Why, the place expresses no more personality than a room in a transient hotel!"

"He hadn't any personality," I growled, and got the flicker of a smile from her eye.

"What about those library books he carried in the suitcase?" Worth came in with an echo from the bank meeting.

"Some more bunk," I said morosely. "So far we've not been able to locate him as a patron of any public or private library, and the hotel clerk's sure his mail never contained a correspondence course—in fact, neither here nor at the bank can any one remember his getting any mail. If he ever carried books in that suitcase as Knapp believed, it was several years back."

"Several years back," Miss Wallace repeated low.

"Myself, I've given up the idea of his studying. This crime doesn't look to me like any sudden temptation of a model bank clerk, spending his spare hours over correspondence courses. I rather expect to find him just plain crook."

"Oh, no," the girl objected. "It's too big and too well done to have been planned by a dull, commonplace crook."

[Pg 63]"Right you are," I agreed, with restored good humor. "A keen brain planned this, but not Clayte's. There had to be an instrument—and that was Clayte—also, likely, one or more to help in the getaway."

Th